It is a well known fact that many households order goods to be delivered to their place of residence. The pace of the modern day life is fast. Often, people simply do not have the time to shop. These days, all types of goods can be ordered to be delivered. For instance, many department stores have catalogues where virtually every item sold in the stores can be ordered by mail. Even businesses that traditionally did not previously make regular deliveries such as the groceries or laundries are now offering a delivery service.
Although the convenience of having something delivered to one's home as opposed to traveling to the place where the item is sold can be easily appreciated, the process of receiving the delivered good can be a bit cumbersome. This is because often the agent responsible for delivering the items requires that a person be physically present at the delivery location to receive the goods. Such presence, however, is often not practical, as the deliveries tend to be made during office hours when most people are at work.
To address these concerns, some prior art locker systems have been developed. In one system, lockers are placed at or near residential sites. The storage units in the lockers have a coded locking mechanism which unlocks when a correct code is entered. The code changes with each use. For a customer to use the lockers to receive a purchased good, the customer inserts a set of coins or swipes a credit card reader which is attached to a locker unit. When the proper amount is registered, a code for opening the locker is given to the customer. The customer then calls the deliverer of the goods and gives him the code. The deliverer brings the purchased good to the locker site and uses the code to open the locker unit. After the good is placed inside the unit, the deliverer locks the unit by closing its door. The deliverer calls the customer to notify him that the good has been placed in the locker unit. To access the good, the customer enters the code to unlock the locker unit. After the unit has been accessed twice, the code is no longer valid.
Although this and other types of delivery systems exist, what is needed in the modern days of the internet and automated deliveries is a more robust delivery and pick-up system which is intelligent and flexible. Particularly, it would be desirable to have a system which can keep track of all transactions and transacted parties, and which is able to report status of transactions and intelligently keep payment data relating to the transactions. The system should also be reliable, safe and convenient to use. Such a system is currently not available.